What better place to spend one of my only two nights off for quite some time than in the dingy basement of a pub watching some comedy?
Many better places obviously, but my girlfriend had a gig and I am not going to see her too much over the next month so this is where I ended up.
It was a night with lots of different comics trying out new material and as it turned out it was actually something of an antidote to the loneliness of touring as there were lots of pals around to chat and joke with. In a month's time I will be fed up with my own company so it was cool to indulge in some camaraderie before the onslaught begins.
When Paul Foot was on stage he mentioned that he was about to perform a topical, solo play about the footballer John Terry and a drunken man at the back immediately began to object, even though there was no actual indication whether the play would be pro or anti. "No, no, you can't do that!" he bellowed in a Northern Irish accent, "John Terry is my cousin."
Admittedly it seemed unlikely that this was true. The man seemed a bit unstable (mainly due to the drink) and he had taken immediate umbrage at the idea of someone daring to joke about John Terry at a time when one might have expected there to be some mentions of him in a comedy club. The commotion was a little far back and Paul could not quite make out what was happening to begin with, but the "cousin" was persistent. "No. John Terry is my cousin!" He was quite perturbed and there was the scent of violence in the air. Though the audience and the other comics were telling him to shut up.
This is the kind of heckler I hate the most - firstly they are so drunk that they don't know what they are doing, but secondly they get morally outraged when a joke affects them, despite having sat through a whole evening of jokes at the expense of other people and ideas and saying absolutely nothing. To say nothing of the fact that so far the comedian had said nothing but John Terry's name. There was no way of knowing what his take on the subject was going to be. It might be positive. But this crapulous high-mindedness means that there are some subjects that can never be joked about.
It reminded me of something.
I was a little bit drunk myself and was immediately irritated by this guy who was essentially just trying to show off to the room that he was related to a prickish footballer (though I think he was just living out a little fantasy even with that tangential connection) and risked getting involved in a melee by telling him to shut up, saying, "Who cares if you are his cousin? It makes no difference. And in any case, somebody will be the cousin of everyone who has been joked about tonight. Why only complain when it's you who is directly affected?"
This argument was confused enough already, but the man was too drunk to follow anything this complicated, even if I had been sober enough to explain the concept with more clarity.
As it happened Paul Foot masterfully took control of the situation, expertly mocking the man and his unlikely claims without being confrontational. He then proceeded to do his one man play, which bizarrely, but perhaps almost inevitably, the drunk Terry cousin wannabe laughed loudly and openly at several times.
Comedy is a strange and ridiculous business.
